The Postulate of a Dialogical Concept of the Human Person. Leszek Kuc’s Polemic with Karol Wojtyła

The aim of the chapter is to attempt a reconstruction of the polemic that took place in the early 1970s between Leszek Kuc and Karol Wojtyła, as well as the subsequent implications of their discussion in shaping Wojtyła’s philosophical thinking about human beings, especially concerning the issue of intersubjectivity. In the debate with Wojtyła, Kuc advocates for a dialogical concept of the human person: “A person is first someone else, and only then oneself.” Despite recognizing Kuc’s postulate as one of the most important voices in the discussion, Wojtyła ultimately adheres to his earlier position, emphasizing the primacy of subjectivity over intersubjectivity. Kuc’s polemical stance, however, was incorporated into subsequent editions of Person and Act, and Wojtyła’s response was further clarified in later anthropological works.